Town of Wheatfield residents argue against equate storage

by jmaloni

Thu, Feb 27th 2014 05:10 pm

by Susan Mikula Campbell

Representatives
of Quasar Energy Group explained to the Wheatfield Town Board on Monday a plan
to build a cement storage tank next to the company's existing anaerobic
digestion facility on Liberty Drive.

A
larger than usual crowd of residents in the audience included many who felt
that storage of equate, the leftover waste from the digestion process, could be
a detriment to the community.

The
public information session, planned for a half hour before the board's regular
meeting, went on for more than an hour, and there were still more comments to
come from residents after the business part of the meeting ended.

Richard
Muscatello, chairman of the Wheatfield Planning Board, explained that by town
law it is within Quasar's purview to ask for the addition of an accessory
building to the existing business. The site plan amendment still will need
approval by the Planning Board and that won't be possible until it receives and
analyzes written responses to questions it posed to Quasar officials, State
Environmental Quality Review Act results are in, and the input of residents and
officials at the information meeting is analyzed, Muscatello said. He added
that the Planning Board also will accept written comments from residents.

Quasar,
an Ohio-based company, came to the Planning Board on Jan. 22 asking to
construct the on-site, five million gallon storage tank.

The
Liberty Drive digestion facility creates methane gas from organic products
processed for up to 30 days. The facility accepts items such as manure, food
waste, greases and the sludges or biosolids leftover after processing at
wastewater treatment plants. The equate is what is leftover after the anaerobic
digestion process and is considered a rich, natural fertilizer for farmland.

Kristin
Savard, president of Advanced Design Group in Lewiston, engineers for the
Quasar project, said the covered tank would be about 200 feet in diameter.

Alan
Johnson, Quasar vice president, said the concrete tank would include reinforced
steel, have a life expectancy of more than 50 years and be subject to annual
inspections of the emptied tank by the state Department of Environmental
Conservation. Quasar itself does daily inspections, he said - "We're not
anticipating there's going to be any issues."

Johnson
and Nathan Carr, Quasar's local biomass account executive, fielded questions
from residents about safety, possible leakage into the nearby creek and from
there to the Niagara River, drainage, odor, truck traffic, how residents would
know when equate was applied to farmer's fields, and more.

"It's
a perfectly safe material," Johnson said of the equate.

"In
whose eyes? The guys making the money side?" a man from the audience shouted.

Trying
to explain about equate, Johnson produced a bag of fertilizer sold by local
stores to the public. "This is what equate is in dry form," he said, noting
that the fertilizer is produced by the Milwaukee Sewage District.

One
audience member objected that would be Class A equate with all pathogens
removed, while with the Class B equate for fields allows up to 10 percent.

According
to the DEC, that 10 percent, such as round worms, generally dies in the field
due to unfavorable conditions.

Savard
pointed out that the site plan request is just Quasar's first step - everything
is completely regulated by the DEC and the federal Environmental Protection
Agency. Those regulations and any additions to the plan required by SEQRA will
be applied. However, she noted, some of the suggestions posed by residents from
a business standpoint would not make sense, since spending additional money
would have "no additional benefit other than appeasing the public." She said
she didn't fault residents for asking questions - "If I lived next door to
this, I'd be asking the same questions." There have been projects proposed for
Niagara County that she would have turned down. "I don't feel this way about
Quasar."

Supervisor
Bob Cliffe noted that the plant and equate are approved by the DEC. "We'd
better have some pretty good science on our side before we say no," he warned.

He
added that there is no process to say no to farmers who want to apply equate to
their fields.

Cliffe
promised that details of the site plan and future Planning Board meetings on
the Quasar proposal will be on the town's website.

In
other matters:

•The
Town Board went on record supporting the Niagara County Legislature's
resolution to oppose Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal to provide free education for
prisoners.